le of discussion is
allowable, though apt to cause a coldness to spring up. As
regards the number of guns which it is admissible to wear,
great latitude is allowed, from one up to four being noted
on the street and at social gatherings. One or two is
generally considered enough, except where a sheriff with a
reputation of usually getting his man and a Winchester rifle
is after you, when we cannot too strongly impress upon the
mind of the reader the absolute necessity for going well
heeled.

[Footnote 19: "Whoever wrote that was badly off his
base. The simon-pure cowpuncher would not accept a
self-cocker as a gift. They laughed at them in fact.
Once, on a bet, a cowpuncher shot off all six shots with
his single-action Colt .45 while his opponent was
getting off three with his self-cocker."--_Lincoln
Lang._]

In Medora in those midsummer days of 1885, Hell-Roaring Bill Jones was
the life of every party. Wherever there was deviltry, there was Bill
Jones, profane and obscene beyond description, but irresistibly
comical. He was as lean and muscular as John Falstaff was short and
fat, but the divergences between the genial old reprobate of Eastcheap
and the saturnine, but by no means unlovable, rapscallion of Medora
were less striking than the qualities they had in common. He had good
friends, none better than the gay, infinitely pathetic patrician's
son, Van Zander, who played Prince Hal to him, light-heartedly
flipping a fortune in the air as others, essentially less admirable,
might have flipped a dollar.

"Deacon" Cummins thought Bill Jones dreadful, which naturally incited
Bill Jones always to do the worst that was in him to do whenever the
"Deacon" was within earshot. He found delight in drawing up beside him
on the round-up and pouring forth every evil tale he knew.

"Jones, I don't know why you tell those stories when I'm around," the
"Deacon" would exclaim, not without pathos. "You know I don't like
them."

After his first encounter with Roosevelt in the office of the _Bad
Lands Cowboy_, Bill Jones told him no foul stories. The contrast
between Bill Jones's attitude toward a virtuous man who was strong and
a virtuous man who was weak might furnish a theme for many sermons.

The antics of Saturday nights were many and some of them were
explosive, but on the whole men l